Archive for month: July, 2015

There’s no secret about which activities may be helpful for business development, right? Pick up any law practice management magazine, flip to one of the zillion practice-related website and blogs, or read marketing suggestions for other professions, and you’ll find all kinds of activities that work for landing new business.

The challenge can be finding which activities work for you. There’s no one-size-fits-all template for business development. When it comes to finding your best process, you must start with self-understanding. What are your skills and opportunities for attaining credible visibility? How do you best interact with people?

It is possible to enhance and even change your natural tendencies—if, for example, there are good indications that speaking would be a productive activity but you’re not a skilled speaker. However, you’re unlikely to succeed unless you first believe you can succeed. Here’s why:

How do you see yourself when it comes to business development? To get a clear view, download and complete my RainMaster Business Development Plan Template (you’ll also be subscribed to my weekly email newsletter, which offers strategies and insights to strengthen your business development activity.) Part one is all about identifying attributes of yourself as well as your practice and your target clients, and part two helps you to use that information to build a plan that actually fits you.

Don’t fall for a paint-by-numbers template that fits everyone and therefore fits no one. It takes work to design your unique strategy, but that’s the only way to succeed. (Need help? Let’s talk.)

There’s one question I’m asked over and over: How much time should I spend marketing? Depending on the situation, I may respond in terms of how many hours a week a lawyer should spend marketing at various stages of practice, in terms of the minimum amount of time a lawyer should invest in marketing where there isn’t enough time to keep a full schedule, or in terms of what current results indicate about future activity. All of those measures are valuable, but there’s really a deeper question that most lawyers forget to ask….

What activities count as marketing? There’s active marketing (finding opportunities to speak to potential clients or referral sources, for example) and passive marketing (such as writing a blog post or article and waiting for it to garner suitable attention to lead to an inquiry from a prospective client). You probably know the broad buckets of activities within each of those categories…

But there’s a better answer.

Next time you wonder whether you’re marketing enough, think about how you’re approaching the people you encounter and whether you need to market better, not just more.

My college friend Helen came to visit me recently, along with her partner of four years whom I’d never met. Tom pulled out his phone as soon as he sat down and kept it out for almost the whole evening. When we tried to draw him into conversation, he’d respond and then return to his typing, and when Helen prompted him to talk about his work, he pulled out his phone to show us some videos related to his job. Tom has a great smile and friendly eyes, but I didn’t get a feel for who he really is. Technology prevented the connection.

Now, you’d never spend time typing on your phone when you meet someone new for business development purposes, right? But think about these instances in which one might unintentionally let technology block a beneficial connection:

You make a new connection on LinkedIn (or other social media) but don’t take the relationship any further.

You email a client or contact instead of picking up the telephone—not because you know that the person you’re communicating with prefers email, but because it’s easier for you.

You have a follow-up plan in place for new contacts, and it relies primarily on email or social media.

You’re so busy processing email during a flight that you don’t even notice the person in the seat next to yours, much less speak to him or her.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of these scenarios, but if they repeat frequently, you’re probably missing out on opportunities. Technology can extend your reach and allow you to work in places you couldn’t have in the past. It’s a strength to use technology well, but any strength overused becomes a weakness.

How can you use technology well for business development purposes? Use it to connect on a regular basis with people interested in your practice (through newsletters, blogs, and social media), to identify and contact people with whom you have common interests, for quick check-ins, and so on, but…

Especially in the early stages of building a business relationship, you’ll benefit from making the effort to interact face-to-face or by voice. Think about the contacts you plan to make this week and ask yourself whether a visit or telephone call would advance the relationship more effectively than an email–and keep your eyes open for new opportunities that you might miss if you’re engaged with technology rather than with the world around you.

You’ll find information on how to land new business anytime you pick up a law practice management magazine. You can’t avoid advice and resources about business development. And maybe that’s a good thing.

If all that information hasn’t helped you to develop your own method for securing new work, there’s something you need to figure out more than how or even why to get new business…

It’s what Seth Godin describes as “help and insight about getting to the core of the fear that is holding us back.”

Read this quick post, and then get honest with yourself about what fear is getting in your way. (Some common fears that I see are fear of seeming desperate or needy, fear of rejection, fear of disapproval, and fear of looking foolish. It’s worth noting that I have yet to see someone fail because of a fear of success.)

What if you could make it easier to change your habits and meet your goals? That’s the promise of The Key to Lasting Changes: Think Goal, Not Tactic on the Harvard Business Review Blog. Elizabeth Grace Saunders. The post’s author, proposes three steps to help “identify tactics that will actually work for you and keep your focus on your big objectives:”

Determine which goals you’ve been unable to meet despite your best efforts;

Brainstorm other tactics you could use to achieve your goals; and

Test one of your hypotheses.

As Saunders recognizes, change will always require discipline, patience, and practice. In other words, change requires effort, but it doesn’t have to be hard.

I’ve been using these steps recently to change a long-standing but detrimental habit of using my email inbox as a tickler file. Using a new folder for items that require follow up and an If Then Then That recipe to create a reminder on my calendar, I’ve been able to clear those items from my inbox. Not only is my inbox cleaner (which feels good), but I’m better at follow-up. That’s a huge win.

What would you like to change? Give Saunder’s process a try. I’d love to know how it works for you.

Author

You're already a good lawyer. Do you want to be a more productive lawyer? Julie Fleming understands. At some point, being in a law firm is no longer about the law. It's about marketing yourself. At Fleming Strategic, Julie shows good lawyers how to be more productive lawyers by building a book of business, while remaining true to themselves and their personal style.